Homelessness, Citizenship, and Identity

In the aftermath of September 11, donations to the poor and homeless have declined while ordinances against begging and sleeping in public have increased. The increased security of public spaces has been matched by a quest for increased security and surveillance of immigrants. In this groundbreaking study, Kathleen R. Arnold explores homelessness in terms of the globalization of the economy, national identity, and citizenship. She argues that domestic homelessness and conditions of statelessness, such as refugees, exiles, and poor immigrants, are defined and addressed in similar ways by the political sphere, in such a manner that each of these groups are subjected to policies that perpetuate their exclusion. Drawing on such authors as Freud, Marx, Foucault, Derrida, Lévinas, and Agamben, Arnold argues for a radical politics of homelessness based on extending hospitality and the toleration of difference.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright Page

Contents

Acknowledgments

This book is the culmination of work begun my first year of graduate
school at UCLA. In the early stages of this project, Victor Wolfenstein and
Ray Rocco were very encouraging and helpful. I am also indebted to the
late Richard Ashcraft for his guidance and patience at this time. While he
was clearly disinterested in poststructural theory, he admitted to me one ...

1. Introduction

More often than not, homelessness is studied as a sociological problem
and the dynamics of power on the part of the homeless on the one hand,
and policy makers and full citizens on the other, are not examined. It is
tempting to engage this subject at the policy level in order to respond to
homeless studies, recommendations, and policies. However, the politics ...

2. Citizenship and Political Identity

In this chapter, I critically examine modern citizenship de facto and de
jure, as well as the construction of the antithesis of the normative citizen.
That is, I explore what citizenship is rather than what it ought to be in
order to demonstrate how the homeless are, in fact, disenfranchised. At
the end of this chapter, I will link my findings to the status of the homeless. ...

3. Das Unheimliche

In Counterfeit Money, Jacques Derrida comments on the horror and contempt
with which people hold beggars. They even feel self-righteous
about this contempt: beggars, after all, have brought their misery upon
themselves. Derrida notes that “the beggar represents a purely receptive,
expending, and consuming agency, an apparently useless mouth.”1 The
poor are always there; they signify endless, parasitic need. Money given ...

4. Homelessness and Panopticism

In this chapter, I will focus on the treatment of the homeless on many
levels: media coverage, academic studies, public policy, and views of the
general public. The dominant research and policy orientation toward
homeless people reveals several things. First, the homeless are clearly
viewed as Other in contradistinction to an implicit norm of citizenship ...

5. Homeland, Homelessness, and Cosmopolitanism

I began this book by arguing that concepts of the home and homelessness
provide the basis for a critique of freedom in the modern nation-state. I
have interpreted homelessness in a double sense: both the physical dislocation
experienced by the homeless, poor immigrants, and refugees as
well as the political dislocation that occurs. This link between home and ...

6. Debt, Guilt, and Responsibility: Schuld

In this book, I have hoped to demonstrate the incredible vulnerability the
homeless experience not only physically but also politically. They do not
simply fall through the cracks but are deprived of citizenship due to their
status. The logic of the modern nation-state in combination with a capitalist
ethos dictates that difference is excluded not only by denial of rights ...

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.